The more Samsung cell phones I come in contact with, the less I like them. Samsung has irked me almost relentlessly with lower quality phones and phones that do precious little more than tweak the design envelope just enough to avoid derisive mocking. And despite the fact that the good folks out at Puremobile sent me a Samsung Jack to take a look at, all I can think when I’m trying this is that it’s more like the Samsung Black…berry.

The Samsung Jack is a smartphone that including alarm, clock, calendar, Bluetooth connectivity, scheduler, stopwatch, world clock, currency converter, a variety of Microsoft features, Adobe Flash Lite, mobile email, mobile web, a 3.2 megapixel camera, a full QWERTY keyboard, GPS receiver, support for a variety of audio and video files, and a battery capable of generating up to seven full hours of talk time.

Okay, so maybe I’m being a bit unfair here. Just because the Samsung Jack looks overwhelmingly like a Blackberry doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad phone, right? Well, certainly, Samsung managed to improve on Blackberry’s twitchy control scheme, but Samsung developed a new problem in its place. Holding on to a Samsung Jack might be harder than you expect because the phone’s highly polished sheen actually makes it feel slippery in your hand. I don’t know what they did, but it felt like I was going to drop it a couple times. I never actually did, but there’s nothing more horrifying that the thought that you’re going to DROP a perfectly good cell phone.

Thus I really can’t recommend the Samsung Jack–it’s got all the tools and games and such you’ll need, but between the truly derivative design and the sheer difficulty of actually hanging on to one of these, the whole thing just doesn’t end well.

The Good

Loads of tools

Incredible battery life

The Bad

Blackberry ripoff design

Phone’s texture is difficult to manage

Rating 5 / 10